Mindful Sophrology

Why try Positive Visualization or Mental Imagery to improve our Mental Health? Positive visualization is one of the tools we use in Sophrology and Mindfulness to help you shift your life in a positive direction. The interesting thing about the mind is that it has a difficult time distinguishing between reality and imagination.

Whether we are really living a situation, or simply imagining it with a mental image, our body will stimulate the same neural networks, causing blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate to respond the same.

While visualization takes time to master, there are several ways to start benefiting from its effects immediately. With Sophrology and Mindfulness exercises we stimulate all your senses and teach you how to immerse yourself in a mental image so much that it appears real. You will learn to take your attention away from what you don't want (to feel and do), and focus on what you wish to experience. Visualization allows us to remove all the emotion surrounding negativity, and instead, place our attention on the positive. The negative will not magically disappear, but its impact on your life will gradually become way less important.

#positivethinking #sophrology #micbt #visualization #mentalimagery #mindset #mindfulness #mentalhealth

Patience is not my strong suit, my forte. And it often leads to irritability which can make me snappy. What can I say, I am not perfect.

It is important to relax our body and our mind, even for a short while during a busy day. If this is your day off, put on comfy clothes, remove yourself from distractions and listen to my voice 🙏

If you are at work, close the door, put on your headphones and take a 10-minute break. 

Enjoy 💫

Do you feel trapped at the moment, because of this pandemic ? Recently a lot of people have told me that they feel limited and kind of trapped, either because of being in lockdown or having to wear a mask.

Now I could say that it is all in our head, which, as long as we are not actually "bound and gagged", it kind of is.

Feeling trapped or stuck is nothing new. Even before this pandemic and outside times of crisis people regularly feel this way because of a situation that they are in, or a relationship that is not working out, a job they don't like or constricting family ties.

To help you get out of your thinking brain and give you some headspace I recorded a calming visualization that will guide you to imagine floating on a cloud. It will be available on the Mindful Sophrology podcast channels as of tonight. A little escape from the incertain times we live in. Changing your internal world can change your entire perspective and broaden your horizon on many levels. If you'd like to find out more about Sophrology and what it can bring to your life, do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

#sophrology #changeyourperspective #feelingtrapped #stuckinyourmind #broadenyourhorizon #fromtheinsideout #headspace #mindfulsophrology #cloudfloating

Week of Wellness Day 7: As my lockdown gift to you, on the last day of a Week of Wellness, a 15-minute Sophrology practice to activate and reinforce vital energy in our chest region, followed by a dynamic relaxation movement to help us with grounding. 

The exercise starts at 5.45'. 

It is common practice in Sophrology to explain the sequence we are about to do, including the way we're going to perform the movements. In this way our brain has already captured the information, there will be no unexpected surprises or questions on how to execute a movement, and our mind and body will be completely free and relaxed to enter the exercise. 

#sophrology #mentalhealth #anxietyrelief #wellness #lungexpansion #groundingexercise #stressrelease #wellbeing

Day 6 of our Week of Wellness is special. I have family and friends who are ill with Covid-19 and I promised we would do specific exercises to help them breathe, to increase lung capacity and clear the lower lobes of the lungs of mucus.

In this episode, we are going to do some more Lung Expansion Breathwork. This can help us train and strengthen our lungs before we get a respiratory disease, and in the case that we do it will support our lungs functioning and fighting the respiratory infection.

When we practice breathing, we strengthen our lungs while our chest becomes more elastic, the muscles needed for breathing become more trained and flexible and thus our breathing becomes more effec­tive. It becomes more economical which minimizes the amount of oxygen required for breathing. The oxygen saved can then be used elsewhere in the body where there is more need for it, such as to combat inflammation and other conditions.

#exhale #breathingtechnique #lunghealth #breathwork #covid19 #lungcapacity #smokerslungs #respiratoryhealth #lungexercises #emphysema #holistichealing #lungexpansion #copd

On day 5 of your Week of Wellness, we are going to do the Walking Meditation also known as Kin Hin. This practice is meant to train us to integrate meditative awareness into ordinary life and the most mundane activities, to anchor us and quiet our mind.

It is a simple practice that gives us all the benefits of seated meditation: increased energy, equanimity, and awareness.

There are numerous health benefits to walking meditation. Walking peacefully, with intention, regulates and reduces the level of the stress hormone cortisol. It is linked to decreases in depression, increases in bone development, and neuronal regeneration.

In #Sophrology we incorporate the KinHin in techniques to reinforce the unity of body and mind.

The most important thing is to walk mindfully, in silence, just calming the mind and becoming present. This exercise takes less than 10 minutes. Less than 10 minutes a day to dedicate to yourself, how hard can that be?

#wellbeing #holistichealth #osteoporosis #kinhin #walkingmeditation #mindfulness #quietyourmind #silence #meditation #wellness #weekofwellness #timeout #depression #stressreduction #equanimity

What can we do to keep our lungs as healthy as possible? Now more than ever it is important to know how to breathe correctly and train our lung function and lung capacity so we will be better equipped to fight respiratory infections if we do catch something.

I researched lung exercises given by specialized nurses and doctors for COPD, emphysema, asthma and other respiratory diseases and I was pleasantly surprised to find a huge overlap with the movements used in Sophrology to activate the upper body region.

In this podcast, I'll guide you through lung exercises to open up our chest and expand our lungs. We'll also strengthen the muscles of the chest wall like you would train any other muscle group if you want to increase capacity.

If you want to see the exercises performed on video, you can go to the IGTV channel of @positivepresence.eu. And there will be a complete repeat of the Week of Wellness on the Mindful Sophrology YouTube Channel starting next Monday.

#sophrology #breathwork #lunghealth #holistichealth #healinghotels #wellness #lungcapactiy #stressreduction #wellbeing #stressprevention #breathingexercise #consciouscontrol #breathtechnique #respiratoryhealth #covidstress #lungtraining #copd

On day 3 of your Week of Wellness, we calm our minds. It is National Stress Awareness Day which I find very appropriate with many of us in lockdown and most of us anxiously awaiting the US election results.

I often get the remark: I can't seem to stop my mind, from thinking, from racing. I do not want you to believe this. You can stop your mind. And it is not that complicated.

Through Sophrology and Mindfulness Practices we can learn how to calm our minds, how to stop worrying, to think more clearly, and to help us focus.  If life is a circus, become a ringmaster. It's your life!

You can guide and direct your mind to where you want it to go. I will show you two extremely easy (yes, again, easy) but effective techniques to stop the hamster running and the monkey swinging. And the good thing is, as I said, you can do them any time and anywhere you want.

This starfish technique is also very suitable for children.

#wellnesswork #sophrology #wellbeing #zoombies #workplacewellness #caregiverstress #stressreduction #holistichealth #mindfulness #starfish #mindfulness #bebalanced #stressprevention #monkeymind #nationalstressawarenessday #conciousawareness #weekofwellness #mentalhealth

On day 2 of our Week of Wellness, we are going to discover our natural breathing pattern, how and where we breathe and make a start on learning how to work with it. It always surprises me how little people know about their own natural breathing patterns. How can we even want to perform different breathing techniques if we are not in touch with our natural breathing first?

Today we'll be doing the most basic Sophrology exercise, almost the "before Sophrology" exercise, Paused Diaphragmatic Breathing.

Although breathing comes to us naturally, when we start to think about it too much our breath often goes up in our chest.  Sophrology uses synchronized breathing and this exercise lies at the basis of almost any type of breathwork and is extremely powerful and beneficial.  Many of us still underestimate the power of breathwork whilst it is the one part of our autonomic nervous system that we can consciously control to make our parasympathetic nervous system kick in.

Diaphragmatic breathing is a deep breathing technique worldwide known to improve lung capacity, for its ability to reduce stress levels and to make sure that our body's hormonal response goes back to a state of calm.

The practice starts at 4.30' and takes 10 minutes. 

#sophrology #breathwork #mindfulness #diaphragmaticbreathing #holistichealth #healinghotels #welness #bellybreathing #stressreduction #wellbeing #stressprevention #breathingexercise #consciouscontrol #breathtechnique